Walled Cities, Drowned Towns

The boy

who gave me a fake name

is calling me a liar.

He says that I’m ruining his life

when what I’m really doing is saving my own.

He sees my self-preservation as selfish

and I suppose from his side

of our war

my choice probably

feels like abandonment.

The idea that

I have a choice

feels

like

abandonment.

Here at the end of all things

finally sprung from the shadows

he tries to gaslight me,

but I am standing in my vengeful sunshine

and no longer need his light source.

So I push them over,

gas, light, accelerant, flame.

Scorched earth policy,

leaving nothing in my roiling wake,

proud to char black all the things he invented,

all the things he pretended to be.

The fire flickered out

so I walled in his dark city

piled bricks and stones of survival

in a desperate border

to contain the annihilation.

I can still see over the wall

so I flood it too,

a drowned town for the good of us all;

I pour concrete to seal in the history,

hope someday they find fossils of our story

and learn something from the extinction.

And when I visit his city

I still feel the crush of the bricks,

the concrete suppression,

the breathing in of water,

the drowning without dying.

And maybe that concrete

will never set,

but I hope

the fire and the water

and the walls

will keep him in.